Monday, February 11, 2008

Panforte tartlets and Physalis cream

Luca, an Italian, is one of my husband's good friends in Barcelona. He married to a Dutch Italian, and had worked as a chef in a Turkish restaurant. These are not the things that make him interesting, but his enuthusiam in often inviting friends to explore new food, and to share speciality from his home country. This panforte morbido (photo follows) ... think of very dense, flourless, very spicy citron fruit cake... is what he particularly asked his wife bringing over to me from Italy a few weeks ago. I'm not sure how he reacts if he finds out I using it in pastries. My comment is, always love it as-is, but even more its versatility to be explored in modern cooking.

These few weeks we call them "ski weeks". People, rich ones I bet, would take a week of vacation, getting out of this city to some ski resorts at where usually they own another house, just to grab a last chance to play with snow before it melts. I don't ski but have quite a few things lined up; any dessert that can be fixed in jiffy would be perfect for me. To do the panforte tartlets requiring not much work, simply take a few things out from pantry and just assemble them together. However, using an extremely high quality of panforte is a must.

To prepare the panforte tartlets - simmer little bit of dessert sweet wine with some mashed panforte for about 5 minutes. The texture got to be like thick paste. Let cool. Fill it up with manufactured mini puff shells, bake them over medium-hot oven until they turn bgolden brown.

To parepare Physalis (fruit) cream - mash up a few physlis fruit, well combine with vanilla yogurt and whipped cream.